Stockholm

Restaurants in Stockholm

Everything about Portofino is unassuming: its quiet location in Zinkensdamm, its nondescript brick exterior, and its short menu, which offers five appetizers, five primi piatti entrees, and four main courses.

Dark mood lighting, pulsing music, and friendly waiters keep this place packed. Nibble on Swedish hash browns with Balik salmon roe or veal with duck-liver sauce while you sip schnapps infused with fennel, cumin, and anise into the wee hours.

Named after one of Sweden's top chefs, the Mathias Dahlgren restaurant is located inside the 19th-century Grand Hôtel, which overlooks Riddarfjärden bay. The restaurant is divided into two distinct venues: the Michelin one-starred Matbaren and the two-starred Matsalen.

The property is part café, park bakery, and part nursery, thanks to the on-site greenhouse where fruits and vegetables are grown. What the restaurant can't source itself, it purchases form local producers. Leftovers, naturally, are composted.

You can spend an entire night at this three-story restaurant, bar, and concert venue. Start with a cocktail at the standing-room-only Entrée lounge; then move upstairs, where long-haired, leather-booted hipsters chat beneath tulle-shaded lamps; the third floor hosts Stockholm's latest bands.

Overlooking the Rosendalsvagen on the Djurgarden Island, the Wardshuset Ulla Windbladh restaurant is housed in an 1897 inn done in the Gustavian-style with white walls, an ornate doorway, and a peaked shingled roof.

Plush red-velvet chairs furnish this glass box cantilevered high over the street below. Along with the views, the landmark restaurant serves refined local dishes like carpaccio of salmon with mango dressing, courtesy of celebrity chef Erik Lallerstedt.

After major renovations in spring of 2011, local legend Pontus Frithiof reopened the multi-level Pontus!, located on Stureplan Square. An Asian-themed cocktail bar with carrara marble and copper details serves sushi, dim sum, and Swedish/Asian fusion cocktails.

A cross between In-N-Out Burger and McDonald's, Max is a family-run Swedish fast-food chain that dates back to 1968. Now it has brought its brand of trans-fat-free, made-to-order Swedish burgers and crispy fries to the capital's airport (Terminal 4).

Frantzen-Lindeberg is located in a nondescript, chocolate-brown former dairy in Gamla Stan. Named after the chef-owners, who are rising stars in the culinary world, the restaurant seats 16 and is completed with an open kitchen, cream colored walls and lines, and dark wood wainscoting and seats.

Housed in the 1895 building behind the Opera House, Operakallaren contains four restaurants, a cocktail bar, and event rooms. The main dining room reflects the history of the building in the carved oak paneling, ornate chandeliers, paintings by Oscar Bjorck, and large arched windows.